


faith amidst the rubble

by embraidery



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Extras, F/M, Jewish Five, Shabbat | Sabbath | Sabt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:13:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23076847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embraidery/pseuds/embraidery
Summary: Five journeys back to his Judaism.
Relationships: Dolores/Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12
Collections: All Your Faves Are Jewish, Purimgifts 2020





	faith amidst the rubble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xslytherclawx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xslytherclawx/gifts).



[Image description: a vaporgram edited photo. It was originally a simple heart with the words "Five & Dolores" inside. It has been distorted several times so the words appear fractured and in different colours. There's a realistic painting of the David statue's face with his face neatly cut in half superimposed over the left side and a transparent blue and purple triangle over the right side. There's a text bubble that says "five and dolores" coming out of David's mouth. End ID.]

Faith is weird after the apocalypse. It's tangled and complicated, and even thinking about it sometimes makes Five miss his family. To him faith is family, and family is faith: the only Jewish people he knew were his siblings and his mom. They'd rarely been to shul.

Still, something niggles at him every seven days when he carves a notch into his calendar stick. After a couple months he decides that even if he will struggle with his faith for the rest of his life, he'd still like to observe what he can. So he and Dolores look for signs of Jewish life under the rubble. They cobble together books of matches, candles, candlesticks, a kippah. It seems that most bottles of wine shattered when buildings collapsed, and of course all the bread in the world has long gone moldy, but it's a good start.

So, every Friday morning, Five sets up camp for him and Dolores. He sweeps up their campsite, makes their food in advance, makes it look as good as possible. He poses her one hand in front of her face as best he can, though she can't bend her elbow very far. Together they say the prayers as he lights the candles. He closes his eyes and imagines his family around him: Klaus bragging about how he helped Grace make the challah, Luther pouring the grape juice, Ben sneaking peeks at his latest novel under the table. 

Sometimes he works out his feelings by having discussions with Dolores. It gets pretty heated on his side, though Dolores tends to keep her cool. Even if he gets worked up on something on which they disagree, their discussions always make Five feel better when he gets down about the apocalypse. Dolores is a bit of an optimist. 

Once he and Dolores get back into the swing of things, Five finds himself a guitar. It's only a little bit broken, nothing he can't fix with some salvaged super glue. After that, he spends a couple weeks teaching himself how to play. He remembers a few chords from when Klaus and Ben tried to learn. They'd cluster into Allison's room together, the two boys with guitars, Five with percussion, Allison with her voice and a hairbrush microphone. Sometimes Vanya joined in with her violin, though whenever she did Klaus would stop playing since he sounded "terrible next to that!" 

Now Five can play L'cha Dodi, hesitantly, starting the phrase over whenever he makes a mistake. He only remembers about half the verses, but he can sing the chorus with gusto. Dolores joins in with her lovely soprano voice, and together they weave a beautiful tapestry with which to welcome the Sabbath Bride.


End file.
